Match Point

—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Scarlett Johansson)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads

Woody Allen is America’s preeminent purveyor of nihilism. He is quoted as saying, “I think that at best the universe is indifferent. At best.� His films are filled with the existential angst of the search for meaning in a meaningless universe. There is often open debate in the films about God’s existence or about if there is any moral structure to the world. For Allen the answer is clearly that there is no universal meaning. We design our own meaning to fill the void.

In his newest film, Match Point, Allen continues his search to understand a meaningless world. He continues to show us that often injustice prevails. He continues to show us that guilt can be fleeting and meaningless. He continues to present a world that seems to be devoid of right and wrong – only what is. But… (Well, I’ll get to that “but…� later.)

Match Point is prefaced with a shot of a tennis ball hitting the net and going straight up. There is a moment in which the ball can go forward or back, determining who will win. The luck of such a moment is central to Match Point. The story follows the upward mobility of Chris Wilton, a mediocre tennis pro. He’s not good enough to make a living off the tour, so he gets a job at an exclusive club in London. There his luck begins to pay off as he makes friends with Tom, a client from a well to do family. Tom invites Chris to the opera, where he meets Tom’s sister, Chloe. He courts Chloe, gets a job in the family business and is on his way up the social ladder.

But he also meets his Tom’s fiancée, Nola. Chris and Nola are perhaps too much alike. They are immediately attracted to each other. The setting within the family provides opportunity, but also restrictions on their relationship. However, after Chris and Chloe marry and Tom and Nola break up, things heat up considerably. Luck begins to work in some strange ways as Chris and Nola’s affair progresses.

Chris often seems completely amoral. He has good things in his life and refuses to give up any of them. At one point Nola pleads with him to do “the right thing� and he promises using the same words. But the viewer knows that neither of these two would know “the right thing� if it bit them in the butt. Eventually, this will lead to him going way beyond merely being something of a cad and he will commit a heinous crime. When confronted with manifestations of the guilt of his crime, he considers that it would be proper for him to be caught and punished, because then there would be some meaning in the universe. But, alas, there is none.

So far, this is all in line with Woody Allen’s films. (It’s time!) But, in this film I think, Allen also offers the beginnings of a critique of his nihilistic vision of the world. He leaves the angst unresolved. In Crime and Misdemeanors, a character who has gotten away with a terrible crime tells his story (in the third person), saying that for a few weeks guilt held sway, but with time it went away. Now this character has discovered that as long as you don’t get caught, there is no moral authority other than what you make yourself.

Allen continues to make that point here, but unlike Crimes and Misdemeanors, where the character goes on to find happiness and prosperity, in Match Point it is less clear that Chris will ever find any happiness. Actually, I think most viewers will perceive that he is doomed to a life of unhappiness. Not so much because of his guilt (although that could play a part), but because he doesn’t have a sense of what happiness would be. By cutting the story off at this point, rather than continuing on to when the guilt wears off as in Crimes and Misdemeanors, Allen leaves us in the bleakness of meaninglessness without showing us a way out. We are allowed to see that when the world has no meaning, it ends up as a dark and depressing place, even when there is joy all around you.

I wouldn’t say that Allen is backing away from his view that there is no external moral structure, but I do think that he is at least showing us the shortcomings of that philosophy.

Watching Match Point (and Woody Allen films in general) should be approached not because of the answers to the existential questions he deals with, but to gain some insight into the questions themselves. I think Allen is continually struggling with the question of the meaning of life, the basis of morality and even the existence of a God he does not believe in. It is a struggle that we all go through at times.

—1. Overview